Using Brand Awareness and Reputation to Drive Growth

Brand awareness is consumer’s familiarity with your organization and services. This includes brand recognition – the ability of people to recognize your brand logo or name and the associations they have with you.

Brand awareness and reputation directly impact your sales rates and your organizational success. Your organization marketing doesn’t have to be challenging. It can focus around simple techniques that gain awareness and retention.

Research indicates that growth in your share of voice can drive growth in market share. This means that the brands which start to control more of the conversation within the industry space online will see control over a greater percentage of the market. This type of organization marketing will help build their business and increase their revenue.

People’s relationships with brands also drive purchases and their loyalty. Seventy-one percent of consumers say that they are more likely to make a purchase from a brand that they follow on social media. Building brand loyalty will also be a critical component of increasing revenue. Finding new customers is an average of 6 -7 times more expensive than selling to existing customers. According to a Bain and Company study, just a 5% bump in customer retention can boost profit by 25-95 percent.

Build brand awareness through your content

Building a brand and brand awareness can be done through your content. Regularly publishing high-quality material that addresses the needs of your users will help establish you in a position of trust. Do you want to increase brand awareness and build your reputation? Show that you’re the site to turn to when people have questions about your industry. To accomplish this:

Map your buyer personas to the buyer’s journey so you know the types of content you will be needing.

Use keyword research to identify topics that seem to be the most popular and important for those in your target audience.

Produce high-end content that dives deeply into the material and offers substance. Truly answer the questions your consumers are asking. Make sure the material offers opinions and insights from research or an industry leader, not just a repetition of everything else online.

Following these four steps to create quality content will help you bring more readers to your site, encourage backlinks, and grow your following consequently increasing brand recognition. Interestingly, 62 percent of millennials also say that online content is an important factor in driving brand loyalty for them. Creating the quality content your target audience wants to see will help your brand awareness and brand growth on multiple levels.

Build brand awareness through social media

Let’s define awareness and brand recognition in terms of social media. In 2016, an estimated 78 percent of people in the United States have at least one social media profile. The popularity of these platforms make them an excellent means of connecting with people, exchanging ideas, and communicating. Businesses can use the sites to build relationships with the target consumer populations by cultivating followers and building engaging profiles.

When you create effective social media pages, you provide your customers with a means of connecting with your brand more personally. Consumers today are very interested in the idea of personal relationships with the organizations they do business with. They do not want to feel as though they are speaking with a nameless entity. Instead, they want to feel connected to a brand and even an actual person who is interested in their unique needs and will help solve their problem.

Social media sites can be the perfect means of creating this type of relationship. Something to remember is there is no need to be on every social media platform out there. If one social platform drives more traffic to your site and creates brand recognition, spend your time focusing on that one. For example, most photo-heavy companies see daily traffic on Instagram and Pinterest. But there are those B2B companies that see plenty of interaction on Twitter. Find what social media platforms work best for your business. Here are some tips for your organization marketing on social media:

Do not be sales-y –people do not want to be sold to. Commercials and excessive numbers of self-promotional articles are not going to be well-received.

Share relevant material that will interest people in your target audience. Even if you did not write it yourself, you will still be the one who found the information for them.

Ask open-ended questions that encourage responses and conversation and participate in the resulting dialogue.

Engage with those who comment on your platform; answer questions, provide resources, and show you care about your followers.

Encourage people to interact with you by offering contests for coupons or other specials.

Remember that 87 percent of consumers who interact with a brand daily feel more loyal to that organization. Social media provides you with the perfect means of having this daily interaction, which will build your brand recognition and positive brand associations.

Build brand awareness through thought leadership

Thought leadership will establish you as a leader in your field and increase brand recognition. Brands that are able to demonstrate their authority are looked to as trusted professionals that can help customers resolve their pain points. As you work to build thought leadership, you will also be interacting with customers on a variety of different platforms. This can be a helpful means to build a brand because you will be demonstrating your expertise in front of new audiences. As you expand your reach, you will increase your share of voice.

Find industry publications where you can offer your insights and knowledge. At BrightEdge, our CEO Jim Yu, for example regularly publishes on Search Engine Watch, Marketing Land, and Search Engine Land. Remember that the chief goal is establishing your authority, although some publications can also serve the dual purpose of cultivating backlinks and traffic back to your website.

Use digital, interactive displays for in-person events such as conferences or trade shows. Creating engaging displays will entice more people to visit you. With digital technology, you will also be able to seamlessly bridge the gap between in-person meetings and digital relationships.

Produce white papers and case studies that demonstrate your expertise. Show how your products and services help your customers.

Look for opportunities for speaking engagements. When you are able to share your ideas and success stories at an industry conference, you are cast as an authority in your field. It is a great way to introduce a room full of people to you and your brand.

To successfully build a brand, you need to pay attention to your reputation and brand awareness. The associations and interactions people have with you will greatly impact sales and growth. Consider using these three means of building brand awareness to start creating an effective, growth-oriented organization.